Done as a Christmas present, and done in time - they picked it up today. Adjusted the baseline of the swash capital slightly in this setting.

Looks cool to me!

PF Champion Script and Charlemagne Std. We're still getting the hang of the hand engraving process, but it's soooo much nicer looking than what you see at the trophy shop or shopping mall.

With Typo happening a scant one hour away from me, I'm having a hard time not being tempted to attend. But really, why would a guitar designer that dabbles in letters need to go?

Desgined some custom inlays for the front of this guitar that were to represent "DD" without actually being two Ds. The result is a little like a sine wave, a bow, infinity, part of a treble clef, or lots of other stuff you can dream up. It even looks like two Ds if you know that's what you're looking for:

When we were almost finished with the guitar, I was looking at my sketchbook from working the fingerboard inlays out and one design stood out that had the customer's initials of "DDM" all folded up and cryptic. I was really excited when the customer loved it and said we could inlay it on the back of the peghead:

The wood is a dark Quilted Maple and the inlays are all in golden mother of pearl, all handcut.

From http://2photo.ru/en/post/18984

Laughing at this!

http://twitter.com/AngryPaulRand

"You can blame me for Steve's attitude with the iPhone 4. When I did NeXT logo, I told him 'I'll give you 1 option, take it or leave it.'"

First time we used Absinette for an inlay:

It's a little joke: the customer's name is Didier, so naturally DDA gets people to pronounce it properly!

The silver ring around the black mother of pearl letters makes a little more sense in context:

I should really stop looking at Etsy!

Cute idea.

Now at just over two, my son, Erik, is in love with letters.

He's tracing the letters on the side of the train car we rode at Train Town in Sonoma. I think he liked the sign more than the train ride!

Some things I'm learning from him:
Z is N
W is M
3 is M and sometimes E
8 is B
Every F should transform into an E
Every C should transform into an E
When you pronounce "R" it needs to really sound like a pirate, "AAAAAARRRRRR!"

"T" Purse

Another person on Etsy if offering stuffed felt letters. I want to make my own, but first I have to select which font. Maybe something squishy like Cooper Black!

Stumbled across knitted letters when browsing around Etsy.

Visiting at my friend Sandy's house, and browsing through her collection of sheet music.

A buddy emailed this to me today: http://xkcd.com/590/

Ha!

My hairdresser has a collection of antiques, including the barber chairs:

A coupla more letters that James cut to inlay into a bass guitar fingerboard:

The letters are about .625 inches high and hand cut from a slab of mother of pearl with a jeweler's saw.

My son, Erik, loves letters!

He's 18 months old and notices letters everywhere, and yes, his favorite part in movies and cartoons is... the credits! I inherited this trait from my father, and so it's more evidence that love of letters can be genetic.

I used P22 LTC Fleurons Garamont on my wedding invitations. My hairdresser loved the fleuron design that was on the PDF keychart, and now it's on her arm:

A quick note so I don't lose track of this cool hoodie that I now need to locate.

Our old forklift:

Allen Bradley cover on a dust collector:

Mr Timesaver doing what he does best, saving time:

Usually we make inlays in pretty designs or type after agonizing over every detail. James made this with scraps from oval inlays to mark his big sanding block:

It spells "Fisher" and it's mother of pearl glued on the side of the block. It's so funky I love it.

Our NC controller that we rescued in 1978 has this sculpted plate on the front:

We've modified the machine extensively, but we still use this controller's "brain" to machine the brass parts on our guitars.

We also have a three spindle printed circuit board drill made by Excellon. Here's the plate on the spindle head:

And the base has their name carved in gabbro granite across the front. It looks really cool:

This table is so large we had to have the building built around it.

This plate is from a short bed planer we've had for at least thirty-three years:

I've always loved this one from our shaper:

I think we've had this one for thirty-five years.

So this shear has been in our shop as long as I can remember, which is at least 35 years:

It's my turn to clean up around it, and I'm just getting crouched down to sweep underneath, and the nameplate stares me in the face:

Wow! it's beautiful, right down to the red paint behind the brand name. I probably haven't looked at it since I was 3 or 4 years old, when it was at my eye level. Now I'm off to document the machine plates off the other old equipment we have around, though I'm certain this one is the oldest.

"What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away."